A federal judge has issued a ruling siding with the Obama administration saying that it has the right to force Hobby Lobby, a Christian-owned and run company, to pay for drugs for women that may cause abortions.

The privately held retail chain with more than 500 arts and crafts stores in 41 states filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration over its HHS mandate. The company says it would face $1.3 million in fines on a daily basis starting in January if it fails to comply with the mandate, which requires religious employers to pay for or refer women for abortion-cause drugs that violate their conscience or religious beliefs.

The lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Western District of Oklahoma and the business says it is opposing the Health and Human Services preventive services mandate, which it says forces the Christian-owned-and-operated business to provide, without co-pay, the morning after pill and week after pill in their health insurance plan, or face crippling fines up to 1.3 million dollars per day.

By being required to make a choice between sacrificing our faith or paying millions of dollars in fines, we essentially must choose which poison pill to swallow, said David Green, Hobby Lobby CEO and founder. We simply cannot abandon our religious beliefs to comply with this mandate.

However, U.S. District Judge Joe Heaton issued a ruling late Monday rejecting Hobby Lobby’s request to block the mandate. Judge Heaton said that the company doesn’t qualify for an exemption because it is not a church or religious group.

“Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion,” the ruling said.

Heaton wrote that “the court is not unsympathetic” to the company’s desire to not pay for abortion-causing drugs but he said the Obamacare law

“results in concerns and issues not previously confronted by companies or their owners.”

“The question of whether the Greens can establish a free exercise constitutional violation by reason of restrictions or requirements imposed on general business corporations they own or control involves largely uncharted waters,” Heaton wrote.

Hobby Lobby plans to appeal the ruling, according to a pro-life legal group that notified LifeNews of the ruling.

“Every American, including family business owners like the Greens, should be free to live and do business according to their religious beliefs,” Kyle Duncan, general counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, said. We disagree with this decision and we will immediately appeal it.”

The court did not question that the Green family has sincere religious beliefs forbidding them from participating in abortion. The court ruled, however, that those beliefs were only indirectly burdened by the mandates requirement that they provide free coverage for specific, abortion-inducing drugs in Hobby Lobbys self-funded insurance plan.

Duncan previously talked about what the Obama administration told the court:

The administrations arguments in this case are shocking. Heres what they are saying: once someone starts a secular business, he categorically loses any right to run that business in accordance with his conscience. The business owner simply leaves her First Amendment rights at home when she goes to work at the business she built. Kosher butchers around the country must be shocked to find that they now run secular businesses. On this view of the world, even a seller of Bibles is secular. Hobby Lobbys affiliate, Mardel, sells Bibles and other Christian-themed material, but because it makes a profit the government has now declared it secular.

The administrations position here  while astonishing  is actually consistent with its overall view of the place of religion in civil society. After all, this is the administration who argued in the Hosanna-Tabor case last year in the Supreme Court that the religion clauses of the First Amendment offered no special protection to a churchs right to choose its ministers  a position that the Court rejected 9-0. This is the administration which has taken to referring to freedom of worship instead of freedom of religion  suggesting that religious freedom consists in being free to engage in private rituals and prayers, but not in carrying your religious convictions into public life. And this is the administration who crafted a religious employer exemption to the HHS mandate so narrow that a Catholic charity does not qualify for conscience protection if it serves non-Catholic poor people.

As you point out, the administration is trying to justify its rigid stance against religious business owners by saying otherwise they would become a law unto themselves, and be able to do all sorts of nasty things to their employees  like force them to attend Bible studies, or fire them if they denied the divinity of Christ. Nonsense. Hobby Lobby isnt arguing for the right to impose the Greens religion on employees, nor for the right to fire employees of different religions. Theres already a federal law that protects employees from religious discrimination and thats a very good thing. This case is about something entirely different: its about stopping the government from coercing religious business owners. The government wants to fine the Greens if they do not violate their own faith by handing out free abortion drugs, and now its saying they dont even have the right to complain in court about it

Duncan said the onerous provisions of the HHS mandate will hit Hobby Lobby in about two months  on January 1, 2013. At that point, it will face the choice of dropping employee health insurance altogether (and paying about $26 million a year in penalties), or continuing its current plan (which will expose it to about $1.3 million in fines per day). So it is not hard to imagine why the Greens felt they had no choice but to go to court.

There are now 40 separate lawsuits challenging the HHS mandate, which is a regulation under the Affordable Care Act (aka Obamacare). The Becket Fund led the charge against the unconstitutional HHS mandate, and along with Hobby Lobby represents: Wheaton College, East Texas Baptist University, Houston Baptist University, Belmont Abbey College, Colorado Christian University, the Eternal Word Television Network, and Ave Maria University.

Hobby Lobby is the largest and the biggest non-Catholic-owned business to file a lawsuit against the HHS mandate, focusing sharp criticism on the administrations regulation that forces all companies, regardless of religious conviction, to cover abortion-inducing drugs. It has faced a small boycott from liberals upset that it would challenge the mandate in court.

The Obama admin says there is an exemption in the statute but Duncan says that is not acceptable.

The safe harbors protection is illusory, said Duncan. Even though the government wont make religious colleges pay crippling fines this year, private lawsuits can still be brought, schools are at a competitive disadvantage for hiring and retaining faculty, and employees face the specter of battling chronic conditions without access to affordable care. This mandate puts these religious schools in an impossible position.

Last week, a federal court stopped enforcement of the Obama administrations abortion pill mandate against a Bible publisher which filed a lawsuit against it — the third such victory.

“But I’m all for moving away from an employer/insurance model and for going directly to a single-payer system supported by tax revenues. “

I’m for breaking away from employer based pools as well but not so sure about single payer. I would pool people by zip code or something and pay for it by subscription, just like we do cable tv, gas, water, etc.

For now though, employer based is what we have and don’t think having comparable plans across employers for legal procedures is too much to ask. We are a secular nation, not Christian (anymore) and at some point will probably be muslim. A precedent of limiting coverage on religious grounds is dangerous ground to be on. If a business owner does not want to purchase something, that is fine, but if a business is incorporated and seen by the gov as a separate person, and if the gov is saying that incorporated person needs to offer x coverage, then so be it. It is the law and if it is not liked, go to congress to have it changed.

Ksen, your reference to Savita is not wellfounded on facts. There is nothing either in Irish law nor in Catholic morality which would have prevented these doctors in Galway treating this woman appropriately. Although abortion is not a cure for septicemia (!), nothing would have them from removing the body of a miscarried baby. I am astounded that they didn't do a simple blood test and put her on an antibiotic drip from Day One, which is how you're supposed to treat septicemia.

But then, all persons resident in Ireland are entitled to receive health care through the public health care system, which is managed by the Health Service Executive and funded by general taxation. It's, sadly, not at all surprising that they declined to treat her on her first visit. Such under-treatment is all to common with this kind of system. Savita was a victim of medical malpractice, not ethics.

with liberty neither for the employer, the health provider, nor the health consumer.

I think it would be very liberating for the employer and the health consumers. For the employers because they wouldn't have to worry about providing health insurance for their employees and could spend more time focused on their business. For the health consumer because he would no longer have to worry about medical bankruptcy.

"For now though, employer based is what we have and dont think having comparable plans across employers for legal procedures is too much to ask. We are a secular nation, not Christian (anymore) and at some point will probably be muslim. A precedent of limiting coverage on religious grounds is dangerous ground to be on."

That is a fascinatingly stupid statement given Muslims are exempted from Bobocare...

We are a secular nation, not Christian (anymore) and at some point will probably be muslim. A precedent of limiting coverage on religious grounds is dangerous ground to be on.

Are you insane? Off your meds? You acknowledge that we might be majority muslim someday and still don't see the problem in allowing muslims to force on every other religion their own dictates? You don't want a religious exemption to be available so youre future female descendants aren't mandated to have female circumcision? Being forced to practice someone else's religious beliefs, as the abortion mandate does, is as unamerican as it gets.

111
posted on 11/20/2012 3:53:53 PM PST
by JediJones
(Newt Gingrich warned us that the "King of Bain" was unelectable. Did you listen?)

You're not slick. You said, "A precedent of limiting coverage on religious grounds is dangerous ground to be on" -- that is completely asinine given Muslims are able to opt out completely from unconscionable Bobocare regulations that Catholics cannot.

I think if I was in Hobby Lobby’s situation I would change employees by attrition. Let them go and rehire people over the age of 50. That would eliminate paying for any abortions for employees and most of their daughters. Older folks make good employees. Any heavy lifting needed could be done by temp workers.

You're not slick. You said, "A precedent of limiting coverage on religious grounds is dangerous ground to be on" -- that is completely asinine given Muslims are able to opt out completely from unconscionable Bobocare regulations that Catholics cannot.

I think it would be very liberating for the employer and the health consumers. For the employers because they wouldn't have to worry about providing health insurance for their employees and could spend more time focused on their business. For the health consumer because he would no longer have to worry about medical bankruptcy.

What is "liberating" about having the government confiscate an ever-increasing portion of the fruits of your labor to redistribute to people who stay home and sit on their butts all day? This is a lot closer to the definition of slavery than liberty. The modern working man is already a tax slave.

You won't have to worry about medical bankruptcy, because there won't be any quality health care services around for you to pay for. You'll have the right to stand in line alongside the local welfare bum for poor quality care. At least until you're old enough where care will be denied in favor of euthanasia, or if you prefer a slow death of natural causes.

117
posted on 11/20/2012 3:59:48 PM PST
by JediJones
(Newt Gingrich warned us that the "King of Bain" was unelectable. Did you listen?)

Wait until everything is Obamacare & we find out that every single medical loction has to have a staff of female doctors, anesthesiologists, etc, because no Muslim woman can be treated by a male.......

Go back and read what I said. We do not want religious dictates, Christina or muslim, do be defining what our healthcare looks like.

I read it correctly the first time. You want atheists to be able to force their beliefs on the rest of us by demanding us non-atheists pay for their preferred social customs, in this case abortifacents. That's no different than a muslim majority demanding we pay for female circumcision, one of the preferred social customs of many muslims.

121
posted on 11/20/2012 4:02:46 PM PST
by JediJones
(Newt Gingrich warned us that the "King of Bain" was unelectable. Did you listen?)

What is "liberating" about having the government confiscate an ever-increasing portion of the fruits of your labor to redistribute to people who stay home and sit on their butts all day? This is a lot closer to the definition of slavery than liberty. The modern working man is already a tax slave.

We already spend upwards of 18% of GDP on healthcare. What is the difference if that money is spent through private insurers or to a single-payer system? In the former scenario 18% of GDP is spent on healthcare and in the latter scenario 18% of GDP would be spent on healthcare.

You won't have to worry about medical bankruptcy, because there won't be any quality health care services around for you to pay for. You'll have the right to stand in line alongside the local welfare bum for poor quality care. At least until you're old enough where care will be denied in favor of euthanasia, or if you prefer a slow death of natural causes.

Unless they still have children age 27 or younger, who Obamacare forces to be covered on their parents' plan.

That's a lie. Obamacare does not force parents to keep their adult children on their health plans. It just allows that to happen if the parents want to keep paying for it. Now who is trying to restrict liberty?

“Plaintiffs have not cited, and the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Mardel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion, the ruling said.”

“the court has not found, any case concluding that secular, for-profit corporations such as Hobby Lobby and Marcel have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion”

What about a case concluding that individuals have a constitutional right to the free exercise of religion? Pretty sure there’re some of them. Now ask yourself who are the proprietors of these stores. Dogs? Chickens? Robots? No, it’s those same rights bearing entities known as humans. What happened to their rights? Or is forming and running a business according to your religious beliefs not a constitutionally approved “exercise”? What is? Whispering the Lords name in your basement with the lights off and door shut, maybe.

Hey, ask a judge if it’d be okay if we banned all news sites and tv stations from reporting on events of the day without a license, and licenses were granted on the basis of conformity with whatever the State happens to be doing. Sounds like a violation of freedom of the press, but I never read anything about tv, or the Internet in the Constitution. Individuals are still free to print and chant things on street corners while ringing a bell. No one ever heard of for-profit corporations having freedom of the press./s

Would you be as incensed if this business owner was a Jehovahs Witness and required to offer health insurance policies to his employees that covered blood transfusions?

I would. I can find no place in the Constitution that mandates that a business, or the state, must provide health insurance at all, ever. It is unConstitutional to compel a business to provide benefits beyond an agreed-upon wage. The requirement for health insurance was just recently pulled out of Obama's well-traveled backside and has no historical or legal basis.

We already spend upwards of 18% of GDP on healthcare. What is the difference if that money is spent through private insurers or to a single-payer system?

Then why don't we stop private production of food and instead send our food budget money directly to the government? Food inflation is out of control! The government can deliver your alloted monthly, Michelle-approved, sensible portions directly to your doorstep along with the U.S. mail.

Let's stop private production of cars as well. Government Motors can handle it. The government can deny automobiles to those who have adequate public transportation so we can lesson carbon emissions. That's good for everybody, right? You'll never have to live in fear of being without transportation again.

We should also stop the independent production of news and entertainment. The government can do it better. Just look at PBS and NPR, with happy cartoon characters for children to enjoy and responsible journalists who don't engage in "fearmongering" like those aggressive malcontents over on FOX News.

And what about housing? It's not fair how some people get evicted from their homes when they can't afford it while others get to live in massive mansions. If the government gets to control the housing market, there will never be another homeless person again. Everyone will be alloted an appropriately-sized apartment in public housing.

/SARCASM OFF

You, my friend, are the one who isn't dealing in reality. You are demonstrating an astonishing depth of ignorance by saying that government can spend our money as efficiently as individual citizens can. You are a useful idiot who believes a perfect utopia is achievable and is willing to give up your rights and your property to the first smooth-talking shyster who promises it to you. I assume you voted for Obama?

131
posted on 11/20/2012 4:18:20 PM PST
by JediJones
(Newt Gingrich warned us that the "King of Bain" was unelectable. Did you listen?)

It is not very liberating for the employer, because the sclerotic micro-regulation and burgeoning bureaucracy of a NHS-style system has a macro effect of (among other things) huge taxes which suck the air out of all economic activity.

And it's not very liberating for the employee, because he can't reduce his costs by living as healthily as he can and opting for cheaper coverage to prevent catastrophic losses, such as a Major Medical plan or a Health Share plan, or no coverage it all. (The latter has heretofore been common for Americans who are in low-risk groups, e.g. young unmarried employed men ages 20 - 30, who choose to take that $nK a year and put it into something they want more, i.e. a business start-up.)(We call this "choice".)

It also results in a sharp reduction in the number of providers, since doctors will get out of a system which micro-manages their professional and ethical judgments and triples their paperwork. Most potential medical students won't bust their butts to go through all those years of schooling, internship, residency, etc. just to be put in the shackles of a system "with all the efficiency of the U.S. Postal Service and all the compassion of the IRS".

Thus you'll get a lot of foreign doctors (like in Britain), a lot of less-competent doctors, and a lot of medical tasks being shifted into the hands of nurse-practitioners, physicians' assistants, and other non-MD's, with the consequent loss of professional training and expertise.

And at last --- the ultimate cost-effectiveness measure --- you get the Adios treatment: the Liverpool Care Path, a.k.a. mandatory terminal sedation.

That's a lie. Obamacare does not force parents to keep their adult children on their health plans. It just allows that to happen if the parents want to keep paying for it. Now who is trying to restrict liberty?

I didn't say it did. I said Obamacare forces the plans to cover children up to age 27. Obviously that coverage doesn't have to be accepted. Obviously the child might have their own health insurance through their own job. The point is the parents CAN'T avoid paying for abortions if they want to cover their kids on their plan, and their kid chooses to have an abortion.

133
posted on 11/20/2012 4:22:01 PM PST
by JediJones
(Newt Gingrich warned us that the "King of Bain" was unelectable. Did you listen?)

Its just a cleaning business that we run but people are cutting back and quite honestly they will clean thier own homes and businesses... I still have gainful employment but this extra is really great supplemental income and it is enough to keep the girls going.

Thank you for the Blessing; and we pray the same for your family Business and your home.

I do believe we are seeing what is going to happen to many more businesses especially those that do not want to succomb to government oversight.

They might have been, but I’ve never heard it. The popular argument was for the right to run white, black, or whatever-only businesses based on freedom of association, which is similar to the constitutional right to peaceably assemble, among others. That’s at least debatable, as it involves 9th amendment reasoning. Religious freedom less so, because it’s there in black and white.

Also, the reason you bring up segregation to buttress a “move on” aegument is because most people have moved on from racism, at least in such a blatant form. I haven’t moved on from freedom of association and property rights, but don’t comment on the Civil Rights Act unless it comes up. Most people aren’t like me in that sense, though they are in the sense that they still believe in the freedom of religion. It may eventually go the way of racism. Not yet.

A plan which matches the preferences of the seller and the buyer of the plan is not "conformed to religious dictates." It's a plan that recognizes the just liberty of the seller and the buyer. That's what we're arguing for.

Otherwise the State can force sellers to sell, and buyers to buy, services and products which neither the seller nor the buyer want. That is a dictate--- and that's what you're arguing for.

That’s the 16th amendment. Though it is paid for through a tax on income—not an income tax persay, as in my opinion it is a direct tax on insurance status—Obamacare gets most of its juice from the “general welfare” clause of the tax and spend section.

Savita's death had nothing to do with abortion and everything to do with the fact that for some reason connected to their basic incompetence, her physicians did not administer the necessary antibiotics. Once she had developed septicemia, an abortion would not have saved her life unless she was also given antibiotics.

None of us are quite sure what your issue is. You want an abortion? It's the law of the land; you can have one any old time you want, right up until the day a child is due to be born. Have as many as you'd like. No one can stop you. If you want to run a company and pay for abortions, contraceptives, sterilizations, sex-change operations, abortifacient drugs, and anything else you'd like to pay for, you can do that, too. Nothing prevents you. But pay for it yourself. Don't ask me to pay for your sex life, your sexual choices, or your employees' sex lives. Kindly do not attempt to compel me and my coreligionists to violate our beliefs just to make things cheaper or more convenient for you or for your employees.

Here's a basic conservative principle: pay for your own stuff. Take responsibility for your own life. Don't force other people to pick up the tab for your decisions.

I realize employer provided health insurance has been the norm. But that in no way means that employers have a moral or social obligation to provide health insurance. They don’t. Traditionally, companies offered insurance and other benefits, such as paid vacations, to recruit and attract people to work for them,to be able to compete for the best qualified people and to inspire employee loyalty and a work ethic beneficial to the company.

Further, I don’t believe any employer has the obligation to pay employees enough money to pay for their own health insurance. Just as a company charges what the market will bear for their product, a company can only pay an employee what his service is worth in the market.

“Here’s a basic conservative principle: pay for your own stuff. Take responsibility for your own life. Don’t force other people to pick up the tab for your decisions. “

I consider myself fairly conservative and somewhat agree with your statement and tried to use it on my ultralib friends. but as they keep reminding me, your argument above is also counter to the whole purpose of insurance, the spreading of burdensome costs. Where’s the compassion! LOL

Is there no limit to your First Amendment rights when they start adversely affecting the lives of other people?

First Amendment rights are limited when there is a direct adverse effect on other people - like shouting "Fire" in a crowded theater when there is no fire. The choice of a business owner to offer or not offer specific employment benefits should not even require First Amendment protection. Note that there is no discrimination in the particular example of whether or not a health insurance plan covers abortion related medications. If anything, the plan discriminates against men since they don't get the same benefit.

Private health insurance plans have a variety of limitations and covered and non-covered items. Why is the government involved in this at all? There is no harm to the employee from not getting many particular benefits, since they may never even use it, and in this particular example the cost of the medicine in question is minimal, and the "benefit" not being offered to the employees is, taken over the whole of the employees, negligible. Nobody that is employed needs insurance to protect themselves from a $50.00 risk.

Put another way, the government is proposing millions of dollars of fines because the employer won't agree to pay for a $50.00 pill that some small percentage of its 13,000 employees may rarely buy. Assuming half of its employees are men, 6,500 employees could potentially use a morning after pill. But of the women, no doubt some are too old to need such a thing, and many are married and also not as likely to be interested in a morning after pill. Some women of course are already using birth control. So for the men, the benefit being "denied" is of no personal value. For the women, it is the probability that they need or want the morning after pill times its cost. Overall I doubt you can show any harm to any employee from the lack of the benefit, and hence logically there is no reason to compel insurance for it.

But that's not the logic behind the law. The goal of the law is to force acceptance of a particular political viewpoint advocated by liberal Democrats, using huge fines as the hammer to force people to give up their values and viewpoint.

Donald, neither insurance nor charity are contradictory to conservatism. EXCESSIVE TAXATION is contradictory to conservatism because it is INVOLUNTARY. Conservatism is defined by free people who are free to make their own decisions on how they run their own life.

Ask your liberal friends why health care should be the only industry funded by taxation and a single-payer system. Why not do the same with food, clothing, housing, education, transporation, news, entertainment, etc.? If the government is so good that they can give us better health care through single-payer than through any other economic system, why should we not entrust everything else we consume to their perfectly fair, efficient and effective central planning?

142
posted on 11/20/2012 4:49:28 PM PST
by JediJones
(Newt Gingrich warned us that the "King of Bain" was unelectable. Did you listen?)

So, Muhammad Ali, who I very much liked as a boxer, is granted conscientious objector status in the middle of a war in which over 50,000 thousand young Americans died, but no exemption here. None of this will change unless and until our side is marching in the streets.

A lib would say that. In what world is voluntarily entering a scheme whereby you may end up paying for other people’s misfortunes or them yours counter to taking responsibility for your own life? Only an adolescent mind could see no difference between private risk hedging and burden spreading and the State stealing money from Peter to pay for Paul’s cancer.

There is something very wrong with the education and mental state of a man/judge who rules that organizations and probably by his rules individuals are now in the USA no longer allowed to follow their consciences as to established and inherent religious conscience. Something about all these status/power seeking people to become judges is becoming apparent. The USA would be better off with less judges who feel driven to shape society instead of wanting to abide by the limits granted supposedly by the people. Our sports ‘judges’ have more common sense than our ‘legal’ judges as to the job they are paid for.

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